With Provost Lily McNair’s recent election as the new president of Tuskegee University, Wagner College has chosen several new administrative leaders for the coming 2018-19 academic year.
Jeffrey Kraus, vice provost under McNair, succeeds her as provost. Kraus, a political scientist, came to Wagner in 1988 as an assistant professor. Since 2006, Kraus has held a number of positions in the Provost’s Office, including interim provost during the Spring 2014 semester. He has also been the college’s registrar.
Nicholas Richardson is the new associate provost. Richardson joined Wagner College in June 2000 as an assistant professor of chemistry. Promoted to associate professor and tenured in Fall 2006, he was promoted to full professor in Fall 2015. Richardson was the holder of the Martha Megerle endowed chair during the 2017-18 academic year. Richardson’s college service includes serving as the Physical Sciences Department chair (2013-18), Faculty Personnel Committee chair (2009-14); First-Year Program coordinator (2007-10, 2016-18), Academic Honesty Committee chair (2002-04), Priorities and Budget Committee chair (2004-05) and faculty representative to the Board of Trustees (2004-05). He was the recipient of the Excellence in Teaching award (2003, 2013), Excellence in Service award (2004, 2011) and Excellence in Scholarship Award (2006).
The new dean for integrated learning is Sarah Jarmer Scott. Scott began at Wagner in the fall of 2007 as assistant professor of art history. She was promoted to associate professor in 2013 and has been chair of the Art, Art History and Film Department since that time.
Scott’s passion for her field, and her interest in understanding humanity through objects it creates, are what fuel her dedication to teaching and higher education. She has enjoyed working with Wagner students for over 10 years and is committed to providing students with a challenging academic curriculum and guiding them in the application of their academics to real-world experience and problem solving. She has taught in the First-Year Program since she began at Wagner, has taught in three Intermediate Learning Community partnerships, and alternates teaching in the Art Department’s Senior Learning Community with her art history colleague, Laura Morowitz. These interdisciplinary classes have focused on a range of topics including museum studies, object-based research with both historians and anthropologists, excavation experiences, public art installations, on- and off-campus curatorial projects and numerous community-based art endeavors. She has actively been promoting and working on art-based learning experiences with the Port Richmond Partnership for 6 years. During her tenure as department chair, she worked to help create and implement both an art history major and the new film studies program.
Geofrey Mills has been named the interim dean of the Nicolais School of Business. Mills comes to Wagner College from Kean University, where he has been serving as the interim dean of the College of Business and Public Management. He brings more than three decades of experience in global business education administration to this position, where his primary objective will be positioning the school to secure accreditation by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Mills has led schools of business through AACSB accreditation three times and is completing work on his fourth. Securing AACSB accreditation is critical to the long-term viability of our business program, and Mills’ experience will serve the college well as we move toward this goal.
In making these appointments, Wagner College President Richard Guarasci said, “Far from acting as a caretaker administration in this final year before my retirement, we have set an ambitious agenda for this coming year that includes the design and proposal of new academic programs, the implementation of our program for assessing student learning outcomes, initiating our Middle States accreditation multi-year process, and significantly expanding transparency in the administration of all offices.”
